Dawn of War

[stigweed]

I just downloaded the demo from FP (it seems to have only just been released). In downloading you can enter a competition to win an Alienware PC.

I used to paint Warhammer 40k stuff when I was younger, but I never got into playing it because the battles on tabletop seemed so boring and too complicated. I've stayed away from Warhammer PC games so far, but the quick-cut ads on Star Trek on Sky for this game raised my interest. I really love the idea of the whole 40k universe, just the tabletop games always bored me.

The opening FMV is pretty sweet, reminiscent of Star Craft FMVs but in the WH40k world, which is always good. Seeing a Dreadnought in full motion is sweet. The game feels a lot like Star Craft did so far but in full 3D and with a few extras like Morale and special characters. The whole upgrade using buildings thing is there but you can also upgrade/strengthen individual squads, assign them leaders to boost morale. All seems pretty cool so far.

The action seems suitably accentuated - just playing the tutorial now and the weapons fire looks really cool. I think this is hardly intended to be a Rome Total War realistic battle thing but it's probably a lot of fun all the same. Shame it's coming out just before I go back to uni ... I'm ment to be learning about java right now.

edit: oh yeah and the space marines I've seen so far have that sort of Classically Educated English Actor accent that lends them a nobility worthy of the Emperor's cause.

[Pitch]

Play as Choas, and get Summon the Bloodthirster Greater Deamon. The go annihalte the enemy's base.

Same the contest is only open to US residents.

BTW i've had the Beta for a month.

[stigweed]

You can only play as space marines in the demo.

After playing a few hours last night (seriously that's how long it took me to do one mission) a few things started getting on my nerves:

1) The diamond shaped mini-map takes up too much screen space and is completely unnecessary as you can rotate the view all over anyway.

2) You can't zoom out far enough, so moving a large mass of units around gets very confusing. (I was playing at 1024x768 but I don't think that makes a difference). Also the clipping range when you swing the view round is very limited. Call it fog of war, I just call it annoying. 1&2 are why it took me so long to play the mission.

3) The stance button is ambiguous, when you mouse-over it might say "Hold Ground Stance (F1)" - does that mean that the unit IS holding ground or will hold ground AFTER you click? Pressing F1,F2, etc seems to indicate the former (ie pressing F1 means the icon goes to the one with the message "Hold ground (F1)", but it's still not clear

4) I couldn't find a way to group units together. Apart from attaching special characters to a unit, it would be nice to group 2 or 3 tanks together or group a dreadnought with an infantry unit.

5) Queuing orders: go here (get in range to increase accuracy) then bombard here, rather than just bombard from current location and lose accuracy or move, wait for them to move, then issue the bombard command.

6) The highlight around a broken squad is not explained - I had to guess it ment the squad is broken (red ring around each unit in that squad; goes away after rallying).

The last 3 may be solved with a better tutorial in the final game. The first 2 would have been fixed in beta if they were ever going to be fixed, I supposed. Maybe someone will release a zoom out mod. The stance thing is just stupid.

[Sideburns]

If you search the relic forums you can find mods to the demo to unlock the orks, terminators and landraider, further mods can give imperial gaurd units but they go a bit beyond my attention span.

Hell of a game though, looking a lot cleaner in the demo then beta.... obviously. Cant wait for the full release.

[stigweed]

I'm not sure if I''ll go for this or not. I tried a quickmatch agains the CPU. I didnt' get beaten but it took me hours to get any ground, literally. Unless you rush the strategic points quickly and win that way, your bedded down for a long war, particularly if there's more than one enemy faction. I could see myself getting bored with this - though I think I would come back every so often to hear some explosions and look at the graphics.